Traditionally, dispensing of medications has been performed exclusively in a pharmacy setting in which one or more pharmacists must be physically present. Legal requirements in some jurisdictions mandate a certain number of pharmacies per geographical area, resulting in a large number of pharmacies, each of which must be staffed by at least one pharmacist. Because each pharmacist can only serve one pharmacy, a large number of highly trained individuals is needed to staff the many traditional pharmacies in existence, resulting in great expense.
In addition to the expense of supporting traditional pharmacies, a relatively large number of individuals may have unmonitored access to medications stored in traditional pharmacy inventories. This uncontrolled access results in a large number of medications that go missing without the ability to determine precisely who took the medication.
Attempts have been made to remedy the inefficiencies presented by traditional pharmacies with kiosks; however, the medication dispensing kiosks available still rely heavily on pharmacist interaction. In some instances, a pharmacist must restock medications. In other instances, the kiosk functions only to place the pharmacist remotely from the kiosk, and a pharmacist must still instigate and complete the medication dispensing process. The available kiosks also do not address the issue of medication security as medication packages are directly handled by a technician and placed by hand into the kiosk. For at least these reasons, an apparatus that automatically restocks and dispenses medications with minimal interaction by a pharmacist would be advantageous.